Saturday, October 22, 2005

One thing I noticed in looking at the NCAA offensive rankings is the way we're grinding out the yards this year. Despite having the 12th-best offense in the country, we rank only 36th in yards per play (5.77).

How does that happen? Well, seeing as we're #2 in the country in plays run per game, it sort of makes sense.

Plays Per Game, best 20 teams

O-Rank

Team

Games

Plays

Plays/Gm

Yds

Avg

Yds/Gm

14

Missouri

6

516

86.00

2858

5.54

476.33

12

Notre Dame

6

509

84.83

2938

5.77

489.67

4

Northwestern

6

496

82.67

3172

6.40

528.67

28

Oregon St.

6

490

81.67

2572

5.25

428.67

38

Indiana

6

490

81.67

2464

5.03

410.67

13

Oregon

7

555

79.29

3411

6.15

487.29

15

Houston

6

474

79.00

2843

6.00

473.83

17

Purdue

6

469

78.17

2747

5.86

457.83

5

Arizona St.

6

468

78.00

3112

6.65

518.67

29

Nevada

6

468

78.00

2566

5.48

427.67

11

Minnesota

7

545

77.86

3432

6.30

490.29

25

Boise St.

6

467

77.83

2597

5.56

432.83

85

Tulane

5

387

77.40

1671

4.32

334.20

70

Georgia Tech

6

464

77.33

2159

4.65

359.83

2

Texas Tech

6

463

77.17

3437

7.42

572.83

31

Boston College

7

538

76.86

2964

5.51

423.43

1

Southern Cal

6

458

76.33

3678

8.03

613.00

50

Western Mich.

6

458

76.33

2353

5.14

392.17

60

Illinois

6

458

76.33

2254

4.92

375.67

3

Michigan St.

6

457

76.17

3288

7.19

548.00

In comparison, check out USC: best offense in the country, and also the best yards-per-play average. Reggie Bush will do that for you. We, on the other hand, have no gamebreakers at running back; as Pat mentioned below, our longest run of the season is backup QB David Wolke's 22-yard scamper.

We're not a quick-strike offense, and I think a lot of that is by design. Occasionally we'll hit on a long pass, but mainly, we just grind it out, control the clock, move the chains, and punch it in the end zone when we get down close. We're a yardage- and time-eating machine.